The Portal to Texas History 2023 Research Fellowship Awardee

Omar Valerio-Jiménez

Project Title

Challenging Exclusion in Texas

Project Description

This project explores challenges to the omissions and negative characterizations of Mexican Americans in public school textbooks of Texas between 1880 and 1940. The Portal to Texas History has significant primary sources on historian Carlos E. Castañeda, writer and historical preservationist Adina de Zavala, lawyer and legislator José T. Canales, and writer and educator Elena Zamora O’Shea. My research using the Portal to Texas History will result in a journal article, and subsequently, in a book published with an academic press.

Biography

Omar Valerio-Jiménez is Professor of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He teaches courses on Latinxs, borderlands, Texas, race/ethnicity, and immigration. His publications include Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory, and Citizenship (University of North Carolina Press, 2024), The Latina/o Midwest Reader (University of Illinois Press, 2017), Major Problems in Latina/o History (Cengage/Wadsworth, 2014), and River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands (Duke University Press, 2013). With funding by an Award for Faculty from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is working on his third book, “Challenging Exclusion in Education,” a comparative study of educational reform efforts in New Mexico and Texas.